


Haven

by falondin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, zombies - Fandom
Genre: Book - Freeform, IS THIS FOR FANFICTION ONLY MY BAD, Other, mine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 20:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3424004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falondin/pseuds/falondin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>15 year old Stevie is cursed to live in a post apocalyptic universe, where Government Soldiers, Bandits, Bounty Hunters, and diseased zombie-like Infected plague the streets. Upon meeting 32 year old Carter, the two of them venture into the depths of danger as they attempt to find the infamous and safe Haven Village.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haven

**Author's Note:**

> so this is the me publishing the book i'm writing, i wasn't really sure where to show it but i've always loved this site and seen really kind and encouraging comments on fics and stuff so i just thought hey lets post it here!   
> anywhoo, i'm not sure if this will get one look so if you're reading please feel free to leave a comment (seriously i'll love you till the end of time)

          Run. Don’t look back, don’t slow down. Just run.

          The sickening sounds of the Infected march all around me, creeping up my skin and sheltering in my ears until consuming me completely. They run fast, they are consistent, they don’t get out of breath, they just crave. This is why I must run fast, why I must not look back and not trip and not panic. I must outrun them, outsmart them and definitely not get eaten: that’s a main priority.

          Where do I go where they won’t follow? If I remember correctly there were only four of them that spotted me whilst I raided an abandoned town. There were others but…I’ll just pray that they didn’t hear. From the sounds of it, I’m not being chased by a herd, perhaps a handful at the most.

          The long road I descend hasn’t changed for miles; perhaps it leads straight to Hell…then again, everywhere you look in this godforsaken planet, Hell is there, waving like the whore it is. That means I’ll be running for hours and I’ll definitely crack sooner or later. I could use my handgun, I mean I’ve used it plenty of times, but I’m not some Lara Croft expert, I’m literal crap. My specialty is hiding, I can stealth and steal and sneak away after. I’m far from a warrior. I’ve been taught how to use a gun; I know my way around one, but actually hitting right in the brain on a moving target? If I achieve _that_ I should get an award.

          With the road not letting up, and my lungs starting to collapse, I have no choice but to at least attempt to be the next Lara Croft. I grab the handgun from inside my backpack and twist around, they’re far enough away for me to focus and shoot once before having to sprint off again.

          There are still four. I aim. I shoot. I miss. I swear. I reload.

          Once again I point the gun in the direction of one of the Infected’s head. I fire and blood sprays out of it’s forehead as it drops to the floor. I reload in a flash and turn to sprint off again. This is going better than I thought.

          I slide between two rusted and beaten cars and turn back again. I aim at another’s head, I shoot, and I miss. Cursing, I reload my gun and see only two bullets left inside. What the hell am I gonna do with the last one? If I even make it to the last one.

          I aim again and miss, hitting a car beside them. This is definitely not going to end well. On my third try I shoot through the head perfectly, like before. Unfortunately I now have no ammo and two raging zombies wanting my body for dinner.

          I grab my switchblade from my left sock and hold the tiny dagger in front of me like a moron. All this is going to do is graze them, they won’t even feel it. Turning to the car beside me I see a toolkit hidden under the dash. Without a second thought I leap inside and grab the biggest tool I can find: a large metal rod. Only, the sharp ends of nails are punctured through every which way…this is definitely not part of your everyday tool kit.

          Luckily, one of the Infected is further ahead, meaning I can swat him down and then knife him, and do the same to his little buddy once she reaches me. I stand my ground firmly, my hands trembling and my lungs still threatening to stop working. Every crevice of my brain is telling me that I should just keep running, that I’m an idiot. I believe every word, but I am _not_ a runner. I can barely make it up a flight of stairs without having to sit down for an hour after.

          The first one leaps at me. I anticipate where he’s headed and jump to the right, leaving him sprawled on the floor. Without a second to lose I smash the bar into his head and then dig the knife through his skull. Before I can turn to face the woman charging at me I’m thrown to the ground. She’s already made it. I keep her at bay with the pole and reach desperately for the knife still embedded in brains. Teeth thrash and nails claw at my face and hair until finally the knife breaks out and I stab it into her mouth.

          Blood and other unmentionables from her previous victims drip onto my face and I throw her off in disgust, jumping up and checking my surroundings while I violently scrape the back of my hand across my face, ridding myself of the sickening things that have made a home there.

          They’re dead. No more. I did it. I didn’t get bit, I’m alive. Now all I have to do is find a place to bunk for the night.

          “Yeah!” I yell, kicking the woman’s body. “That’s what happens when you cross the Zombie Slayer, bitch.”

          Before I even get to my song and dance a sniper fires directly past my ear and I twist in the air, dropping to the ground and crawling for the car in front of me, tipped on its side, sheltering from the direction the bullet came.

          That’s one good thing I’ve learned from my years of lonesome survival, I’ve developed a sense for bullets. Considering I’ve been shot at way too many times, I can interpret the direction they were fired from and take shelter before getting my ass kicked.

          I peek up above the car and regret it immediately. A bullet shoots right past my head and I duck once again. I’m guessing they still have a brain so I fish for my old handkerchief – once belonging to my Father – and wave it up rapidly.

          A few minutes pass and my hand starts to lose all consciousness, I lower it back down and wait another few minutes. No one shot after the flag, perhaps they packed up and drove off?

          A gun clicks beside my head and I turn my eyes to greet a Magnum Revolver staring into my sockets.

     “You infected?” demands the man holding it.

     “Nope,” I whisper. _Please, please don’t shoot that gun._

          The safety catch flicks back and the gun is lowered, I stand up to meet two men, one holding a sniper, the other a revolver.

          The one with the revolver has a dark face clouded with mud and dried crisps of blood. His eyes are equally as dark and his hair – forming a faint moustache and heavy stubble on his face – is pitch black. Slight wrinkles crease all over his face, leaving him looking as though he’s in his forties. The outfit he wears looks like he’s just stepped out of the Wild West, the cowboy boots and everything.

          His friend’s face is equally as dark, only his eyes shine turquoise and his hair a muddy blonde. He looks much younger, in his twenties perhaps. Unlike Clint Eastwood next to him, he wears a checked and practically ripped to shreds shirt, with jeans and cowboy boots. There’s only one group of people who wear things like that: bandits. The clothes are ripped from the knives they used to attack the people who actually owned them.

     “D’you take on these four Walkers alone?” asks Eastwood in a thick cowboy accent.

     “Surprising, I know,” I jest nervously.

     “How old are you?” asks Eastwood.

     “Old enough.”

     “When were you born?”

     “Classified.”

     “What’s your name?”

     “Not specified.”

     “Where d’you come from?”

     “Earth.”

     Eastwood steps forward, gun raised, “Now are you tryna make a fool outta me, girl?”

     “Whoa, easy Jack, she’s just a kid,” says the other one, lowering Jack’s hand.

     “Are you bandits?” I ask, my voice shaking in fear.

     “Used to be. ‘Till we discovered what a bunch of a-holes they were,” replies the blonde one.

     “Why are you here?” I ask.

     “Why should we answer any of your damn questions when you didn’t answer any of ours?” yells Jack.

          I sigh. Why would I tell them pieces of information about myself like I’m some Wikipedia page? Giving away personal details is not on my agenda.  
     “You wanna come with? You look a little young to be defending yourself,” asks the young one.

          Yeah. Like I’m going to trust a couple of bandits, ex or not. What they did to people, they probably tore families apart, raping the females and then stealing their goods from their dead bodies, after heartlessly murdering their families in front of them. They would’ve stolen from groups of survivors, leaving them starved and cold. I mean yeah, I steal. I steal frozen yoghurt and apples and sharp objects when I run out. But bandits? They take everything, from personal to necessary, and if they haven’t taken enough to kill their victims they shoot them all themselves. Bandits don’t show mercy. What happened….it’s still engraved into my mind. What they did…

     “No. I don’t need either of you,” I spit, a little more lividly than I expected.

     “Jeez Buffy, fine, fend for yourself,” scoffs Jack.

          I watch the two of them climb into a worn out car and drive off, swerving through overturned car after overturned car. I keep watching until they become nothing but a speck in the distance, as I slide my bloody knife back into my sock. I hate bandits.

          Bandits are the rebels in this World War III. The war has been going on since 2021, two years after the disease spread and we became a Walking Dead universe. The disease doesn’t even have a name, just like the ones who have it don’t have a title. It’s just The Disease, and they’re just The Infected. Or the Walkers. Or the Zombies. Whatever.

          After all hell broke loose in 2019, over half the population of Earth was either dead or un-dead – since The Disease makes you brain dead apart from one section that just thrives for whatever’s placed in front of it. The government then bombed pretty much every major city in an attempt to wipe out most of The Infected, and in the places left unharmed or deemed reliable they built ‘The Zones’.  
In all cities over the world there are Zones that are like prisons. Literally…they were built on prison ground. In fact if I remember correctly, I think one of them was built in the ruins of Auschwitz. No, they aren’t Nazis, apparently they needed large ground and I guess that haunting place provided it.

          Moving on, these Zones, we’re all kept inside and ruled by the Government who tell us what we can and cannot do and how to live like normal again and blah, blah, blah. My opinion? It’s a bunch of crap. They just didn’t want us escaping from the Zones and joining up with the Bandits.

          However, blowing up whole cities around the world wasn’t the worst of their ‘treatment’, the Government Soldiers flew across Washington, Texas, Virginia and New York and dropped this weird bomb-thing that polluted the water and the clouds and the rain and whatnot. Don’t ask me how they did it, but if you get caught in the rain in one of those states, you’re probably going to die. It’s like acid, it burns your skin and if you’re caught in a shower with no shelter your skin will pretty much boil away, all your flesh will drop off and it’s slow and it’s painful.

Eventually, the Bandits started attacking Zones and Government Soldiers, starting World War III, where the bad guys rebelled against the bad guys. Now all the good guys who just want to die of old age are caught in the middle, struggling to survive with four different enemies chasing their tail.

          The Bandits aren’t the only enemies in this world, oh no, there are Government Soldiers, or just Soldiers, or just Law Soldiers. These guys – in the days when Earth was not fucked over by the Disease – would have been Police Officers, Soldiers in the Army, perhaps Lawyers, anyone who cared about the Government and the Kings and Queens and Presidents and Prime Ministers. They believe they are doing the world justice, the people justice, since they created the Zones – those stupid areas. But they are blinded by their own corruption, they have eroded over the years and have been reduced to mindless and wandering animals, chasing the Bandit’s tails and going through whoever stands in their way in order to complete this mission. It’s the same with Infected. The Government Soldiers feel they have a job to rid the world of its evil, and they do it in extreme and awful ways.

          I’m not finished yet. There are a group of people – significantly smaller than Bandits and Law Soldiers – called Bounty Hunters. From the World before, these people were mostly poor, lower class/working class guys who are now getting back at the world. These assholes are…assholes. They don’t care for anyone else and of course – from the title – they do assassinations and theft for Bandits, Soldiers and Survivors alike. They remind me of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. All they need is the envy or the hatred that one person has for another, and they will make that person suffer. In gratitude for their services, they are usually paid in food, supplies or even gold. Of course, what an earth is cash going to get you in this world? Strangely, the Bounty Hunters all believe that one day in the future, the Infected will die out and the world may be rebuilt, and once it has been rebuilt, there they will be, rich as pigs, and they say this is their revenge for the lives they lived before.

          Then there’s the Holy. These people have practically created a new religion, founded through Christianity. They believe that God is punishing us, sending all these dangers and destroying the world so that we feel the pain he has felt watching our hatred and anger towards each other. They say this is our chance to redeem ourselves, that all must prove to God that we can be forgiven, redeemed. Then, and only then, may we be brought to his side.

          And it’s all like a big game of hide and seek. The Bandits chase whoever peeks their interest, the Law Soldiers follow like dogs, the Bounty Hunters kill whom they please and steal what they will from the bodies of the fallen, and the Holy curse us all with their wicked God, while the Infected fancy every one of them.

          I’m in the middle of this crap. It’s happening everywhere, all over the planet, not just America. Nowhere is safe. You could try living in a Government Zone, but it’d probably get bombed sometime in the coming years.

          So, that’s what life is like now, in 2026. It’s every man or woman for themselves. Personally I don’t think anyone chooses to be alone, most people I’ve come across are in groups or with a few others, being alone is dumb. That’s why I’m the biggest idiot I’ve met.

          I wasn’t always alone.

          The smell of damp suddenly fills the air and before I know it my arm begins to burn, I stare at the small bubble boiling on my skin and curse. The rain is coming. With no shelter to find anywhere else, I leap into one of the cars and sit tight. Thank god I was on what must’ve been a busy highway, or I would’ve been Washington’s Rain’s next victim.

Not long after sheltering, the rain begins to pour down, there’s no lightening or thunder so perhaps it won’t be as long as the last one. The chemicals they released into that thing somehow don’t burn away trees or cars or buildings, just people and animals and Infected.

          After sliding down behind the driver’s seat and passenger’s seat, hidden from unwelcome eyes, I decide a good pass time for the rain is sleep.

 -

        _“Ok, ok, ok” stammers Mommy. “Sweetie look at me, everything is going to be fine.”_

_“What’s happening?” I ask._

_“Mommy’s having a little problem sweetie stay with your brother.”_

_Mommy opens the garage door. Screams. Mommy pushes Jon away because he’s trying to see inside. “No! We have to go!” yells Mommy with water on her cheeks._

 -

          My eyes flicker in the darkness. I wiggle enough to free my arm from my back, ‘tis bright red and I can barely feel it, having used it as a bed all night. I sit up after checking for stragglers and seeing emptiness. The sky is ebony and I look at my watch to see it’s only eleven at night. The rain has stopped. I climb out the car hesitantly, but there is no drizzle either. Now. A plan.

          I didn’t manage to steal any supplies from the village, there were no living people there, just Infected. The only reason I got caught was because I hadn’t known that one of them was upstairs, and then fighting it off caused pretty much the whole town to awaken from its beauty sleep. Of course only a few of them actually pursued fresh meat to the point where they didn’t stop following me for at least twenty minutes. Those idiots now lie eroded on the highway.

          This time – hidden by the dark – I can sneak a way into the bingo house, grab all the goodies and make haste. I set off back in the direction I came, with food and warm clothes and blankets on my mind. The village used to be one of the Haven Villages.

          Haven Villages are small towns left abandoned and unaffected by the bombs or the rain or the enemies; they were rebuilt and occupied by Haven Workers, this worldwide group of people like me, who are against all the bad guys and just want to try to live in peace. I hate coming across abandoned Haven Villages, dims my light bulb of hope a little more every time.

          But there’s one Haven Village in Colorado, it’s the biggest one and as far as I know people from all over can be normal there, live happily. The village is near Pike’s Peak. It’s where I’m headed. Driving to it takes around two days, walking? I’m guessing a week.

          I don’t care, I’ll get there. I have an idea of how to get to Colorado from Washington; I was never a bright kid in Geography however, so I’ll probably take two weeks.

          After running half the way, I reach the outskirts of the abandoned Haven. Tracing the perimeter, it’s pretty much how it was before. A few Infected wandering the streets, some I can see in the house windows through my binoculars. I check the church: no Infected inside.

          I overheard Bandits a few weeks ago mentioning a raid they were planning on Washington’s Haven. After stealing one of the guy’s maps of ‘bingo sites’, I made my way here, since it’s the closest and I wanted to get there first.

          I climb down the ditch built around the village and enter. Crouched, with my eyes on the Infected outside, I slowly but quickly head to the Church. Once inside I check the place – top to bottom. Empty. I guess I was so excited the Bandits didn’t get here first that I forgot to check upstairs the first time. I rush over to the altar, where the map says the goods are. My excitement drops as I stare at a trap door, with a chain strapped around a lock needing a key I don’t have. I curse expressively under my breath. Perhaps the key is around here somewhere?

          I lift up the bibles in the stands and check behind the Jesus statues and the curtains. Just as I finish scouring behind one of the statues, finding nothing, I pull my hand back out and notice my arm is stuck on something. I yank it impossibly until it untangles itself and suddenly Jesus smashes onto the ground and the church bells start going crazy.

          Fantastic.

          My arm just had to be stuck on the lead that rings the bells.

          I don’t even have to open the church doors to know that every Infected within a 500 mile radius can hear the damn bells in this dead silent town. I turn to the window I climbed in from and scramble out, collapsing into gravel and silencing my winces as it digs into my palms. I race hunched over to the ditch I came from. Squinting, I see a hoard of running Infected headed this way. Not knowing whether or not they’re running for the slab of meat in front of them or the noise, I turn left to the forest. The entrance to the village lies in the way, meaning I’ll have to _cross_ the _road._

          I pause, carefully watching the Infected on the streets make haste toward the church. As the streets lie empty for a split second, I take advantage and sprint across the road, delving into the dark forest behind the town.

          If I thought it was dark from the outside, it’s a whole lot darker on the inside. I run as fast as my legs can take me, for as long as possible. The forest doesn’t seem to end, every time I think I’m stumbling upon an exit, a bunch of trees just appear and it’s like running into the forest all over again. The pitch black makes it impossible for me to keep quiet. Branch after branch, snapping and crunching with every beat of my foot. Not to mention the huge thwack the branches on the trees make whenever I throw myself through them.

          Suddenly I’m not running anymore, but flying. And then I’m on the ground, covered in mud, with a large branch staring at me smugly after successfully tripping me up. I lie still. No sounds can be heard other than the strange dripping noise. I begin to smell damp, not the damp I’d smelt the whole time from the previous rain shower, but a new damp. Something burns my neck. I feel the rain coming.

          “Shit!” I curse, throwing myself deeper into the forest, racing to some kind of exit, some kind of shelter. I can’t die now. I’m not ready. Not today. I’m closer to Haven than I’ve ever been before. This isn’t fair!  
          A light flickers, not the moonlight, but a warm light, as if coming from a building. That’s enough to send my legs soaring through the forest towards it. It gets bigger and bigger until I see a house in the distance. A small house, two stories, but thin, probably having one big room on the ground floor and another big room on the top, it couldn’t house anymore. Another raindrop flecks my cheek, I run harder, as if I could run any faster than I already am.

          I collapse into the door and it opens at my weight. I fly onto the wooden floor, slamming the door closed with my foot and lying there for a second. This was luck. This was the best luck in the world. Where the hell do you find a house, in a forest, in a life or death situation?

          Cold steel suddenly touches my skin and I’m being yanked from the floor by a hand holding a knife to my throat. My heart stops.

     “Who the fuck are you?” demands a quiet, deadly voice.

     “I-I don’t mean any harm, it started raining and I-”

     “What are you doing in my house?” he yells.

     “Please, I just need shelter until the rain stops,” I plead desperately. There are two common ways of dying in this world and being burned alive is not one I wish to go by.

     “I don’t give a fuck, get the hell out of my house,” the man chucks me towards the door and I raise my hands.

     “Please! Please!” I beg.

     “Get out,” his blue eyes burn red and black in anger.

     “I’m begging you, just until the storm stops, you can hold a knife to my throat the whole time you can watch me you can take my belongings away I don’t care just don’t make me go out.”

     The strange man drops the knife. “As soon as the rain is gone you’re out.”

     “Understood.”

     “Sit on the couch where I can see you.”

          I walk over to the couch in the centre of the back wall and sit obediently. Opposite is another couch and on the other end of the room is a very small kitchenette. Behind the second couch is a small wooden table with two chairs either side, and in the top right corner of the house is a set of narrow wooden stairs leading up to what I guess is the bedroom.

          The man walks over to the door and throws a bolt over it, followed by a metal plank placed across. He must have come in a few seconds before I saw the house, and forgotten to place all his safety regulations down.

          There are only three windows, two on either side of the main door, the other spread across the back wall. The man throws a blind over all three. The warm light comes from two light bulbs, one on the ceiling between the two sofas, the other above the kitchenette.

          A strange little house.

          The Man grabs a pistol from a draw in the kitchen and sits on the sofa opposite mine. He is tall, not massively tall but definitely tall, I’d say around 5’11”, 5’12”. He has dark hair that is pushed up fairly high above his head. His eyes are bright blue, but he still manages to look utterly evil and pissed off, he must seriously hate visitors. His voice is deep too, gruff, as though he hasn’t used it in so long. He’s wearing a black shirt, cut in too many places, a dark denim shirt sits over that, with half the buttons undone. His jeans are like mine, dark denim and cut in too many places. His boots are big and green, like soldier’s boots. He has a strong jaw line and defined cheekbones. For someone who wants me dead he’s kind of good looking – if I can remember what that looks like, considering I haven’t really mingled with too many people lately.

          “What’s your name?” he asks, sounding annoyed at the sound of his voice.

     “Not specified,” I repeat from before.

     “How old are you?” he asks, now annoyed at the sound of my voice.

     “Classified.”

     “You look about five,” he sighs, irritated.

     “ _Sorry_ ,” I say sarcastically.

          After a few minutes of silence things start to get uncomfortable. “Aren’t you going to ask me anything else?” I ask.

       “No.”

     “Why?”

     “Because I don’t give a crap.”

     “Well great,” I chirp.

          Another minute of silence. “What’s your name?” I ask.

     “Can you shut up?”

          More silence.

          “Here’s how this is going to play down. You don’t talk to me, you don’t touch anything and you give me your little backpack and get rid of any weapons you have on you. And any sudden moves with something I think can kill me and I blow your brains all across my living room wall. And you leave tomorrow morning. Sharp.”

          I stare at his serious face. He means every word. “Firstly, this is Washington, and it’s a storm, and given all the crap the Law put in the rain I’m guessing it’ll be like this for a couple of days,” I say.

     “Then I guess you better pray to your God that it ends tomorrow,” he says in a monotone voice. He stands up and begins yanking my bag off my shoulders.

     “Ouch, jeez ask first, you barbarian,” I moan after he ignores the protesting cracks in my arms.

          He begins unloading all the contents of my backpack onto the floor. A notepad, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, a bunch of colouring pencils, my mix tape, my binoculars, two boxes of ammo (I did not realise I had that what the hell), my handgun and a map. The man grabs the weapons and throws them into the kitchen.

          “Be careful with that, it’s a gun,” I cry as it smashes onto the wooden floor, his face telling me he’s tuned out the radio my voice is on.

          He throws the backpack at me and disappears up the stairs, mumbling “don’t move.”

          So I’m sitting, silently waiting, not moving an inch, for what feels like an hour. He then walks back down the stairs, and grabs my backpack again. Before I can protest he’s thrown it back, having gotten what he was searching for. The man opens the first page to Pride and Prejudice and sits on the sofa opposite me.

          “Hey!” I call, since he won’t tell me his name.

     He looks up as though the worst person in the world just reached out to him, “What?”

     “You mind?” I ask, my eyes motioning the book.

     “No, I don’t.”

     “That’s _my_ book.”

     “And this is _my_ house.”

     “Some house,” I mutter, but he hears.

     “Get outside then,” his words send ice spikes up my spine. I deflate my position and he watches as I lean into the sofa, making myself comfortable.

          “What’s your name?” I ask after a bunch of silence.

     “Not specified,” he replies, eyes focused on the book.

          Oh I see. He says things that you’d think would make you laugh but actually, just by looking at the expression on his face and hearing the tone of true hatred, you know he’s not even trying to be funny; he’s just trying to emotionally break you. What a treat to hang with.

          “Seriously, I need to call you something while I’m here,” I say after a while.

     He sighs angrily, “Carter.”

     “Your first name is a last name?”

     “Yes.”

     “Well hey Carter, I’m Stevie.”

     “You have a boy’s name? Looks like we’re even,” he has no hint of jest in his expression, voice or body language. He seriously means we’re even; he’s not trying to get me back.


End file.
